EU must rethink its development policies to better combat poverty in the world and in Europe

Caritas Europa co-organises an international conference about the global impact of the anti-poverty policies of the European Union and its Member States

Brussels, 27 May 2010 - Caritas Europa is co-organising today, along with Secours Catholique/Caritas France and La Maison de L’Europe, an international conference about the impact of the EU’s policies to combat poverty at worldwide level. Notably, the event aims at shining the spotlight on the link between the fight against poverty in Europe and the development of Southern and Eastern societies.  As the EU already was lagging in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals, the ongoing financial crisis is seriously hampering any chance to effectively combat poverty in the world. Its direct impact on poverty is devastating: unemployment is skyrocketing worldwide; development budgets are suffering drastic cuts; migrants’ financial transfers to homelands are diminishing dramatically…   Caritas Europa, Secours Catholique and La Maison de L’Europe believe that the EU must play a leading role in the fight against poverty. Current development policies must be rethought and change orientation. More specifically, lawmakers must put at the core of the debate the fact that these policies are meant to help human beings, serve the protection of their rights and work in coherence with other policies that might have an impact on or be impacted by development policies, such as migration or international trade.

An estimated 3 billion people live with less than €1 a day in the world

150 participants from about 40 countries from different continents are expected to gather at La Maison de l’Europe. There will be citizens, experts, members of nongovernmental organisations, representatives and partners of Caritas, representatives of local, national and European public institutions, working together around three themes: 

• The impact of the European Union policies, in particular migration policies, on achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Eastern and Southern countries.
  
• The positions and initiatives of the European Union and its Member States for the development of worldwide partnership in the context of the current economic crisis.
  
• The coherence of the European policies to ensure the respect of the rights, democratic governance and the State of law as enabling factors to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
  

A set of common recommendations for better achieving the Millennium Development Goals and reinforcing the means to combat poverty and social exclusion in Europe and the world will be presented and addressed to the French and European institutions at the end of the event. The set will be available in this site as soon as possible.

The conference will be accompanied by an exhibition co-financed by the Ministry of Culture: “Solidarity in the Fight against Poverty and Social Exclusion in Europe and in the World.” This itinerant exhibition will travel later on in France and in Europe, through the local teams of the European Caritas organisations.